The national trade regime is rigid, with extensive tariff and non-tariff barriers in place. Main economic policies have included active state interventions designed to achieve self-sufficiency in cereal and energy resources, import substitution, and the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves.
As of , about One of the most difficult challenges the country is facing is a lack of employment opportunities, and a high disparity in living standards between rural and urban areas. Since , remittances have continuously declined and their share in GDP has been halved. The Government of Uzbekistan recognizes that governance at central as well as local levels remains an area where further reforms are needed to improve participatory decision-making, transparency, and the openness of government bodies.
Other pressing issues include the need to improve public awareness of and adherence to human rights principles, ensure access to justice for vulnerable groups, and promote gender equality. Access to drinking water is a pressing issue, while the Aral Sea disaster has had a negative impact on regional economics, the environment, and the health and livelihoods of local populations.
In the last decade, Uzbekistan has achieved significant progress in reducing low income rates and tackling malnutrition. But the issue is both political and technically complex, so swift progress should not be expected. Though border integration is a distant prospect for Central Asia, not least because of the complex Afghanistan situation, EU expertise with external border security could help ease some of the existing barriers to movement of people, goods and services within the region.
Western partners could assist, for example, with programs to install effective equipment for safe, secure, and swift border-crossing. While welcoming Chinese investments, he is unlikely to want Beijing to become too influential.
Russia and China are powerful actors, but they have no interest in liberalisation. Relations with China have been courteous but not very substantive, centring on infrastructure projects, though work has been paused on a gas pipeline, Line D, connecting Turkmenistan and China through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Uzbekistan is contracted to export ten billion cubic metres of gas each year. Falling demand in China for gas could hurt the Uzbek economy, as well as those of its neighbours. Hide Footnote Putin visited neither during his regional tour, but Russia considers Turkmenistan the weak link in Central Asian security and Uzbekistan the top exporter of violent extremists to Syria and Iraq.
Both will thus continue to be subjects of Russian pressure. With uncertainty surrounding the U. On resuming textiles trade with Uzbekistan in December , the EU acknowledged positive steps toward eradicating child labour and urged an end all forms of forced labour. Uzbeks are still forced to pick cotton, but pressure from European partners might improve the situation. Hide Footnote Its need to develop and modernise its agriculture could give the EU and member states a chance to build links with Tashkent and local government and businesses.
Mirziyoyev did not merely inherit a system of governance built on tight, often brutal control and suspicion of change. He had an important part in creating and implementing it.
If he expands on this to address the difficult issues and receives conditional support from abroad, there may be potential for sustained, broad and genuine cooperation. For now though, much more is needed. It is progress that the new administration acknowledges all is not perfect, and a beginning is needed to resolve the issues impacting society.
But content is as yet lacking and delivery is uneven. Border demarcation should be accompanied by mutual efforts to establish favourable conditions for legal movement of people as well as goods and services across the borders.
The political prisoner issue should remain high on the agenda. Hundreds of Uzbeks are still in custody; speech and expression remain suppressed. Which way he wants to take Uzbekistan is still uncertain. After 25 years of authoritarian rule, Uzbekistan faces unpredictable neighbours, a jihadi threat and deep socio-economic challenges.
New President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has taken small steps toward vital domestic and foreign policy reform, and outside partners should push him to do more to avert real dangers ahead. His steps to repair relations regionally have been met with mistrust by Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, while the tough issues, such as sharing of resources, have yet to be broached. There has been even less indication of new directions internally, where the new president shares power with at least two other prominent members of the Karimov era.
A balance with Rustam Azimov, the finance minister, and Rustam Inoyatov, head of the National Security Service SNB , appears to have been maintained since the death of Karimov, the only ruler the country had known since its independence from the Soviet Union.
This bodes well for short-term internal stability but not for reform. Mirziyoyev will need to cultivate their continued support and that of others, including rich Uzbeks living in Russia and elsewhere, all of whom will want to preserve the status quo. The new administration is likely to pursue business as usual with Russia, China, the U. But each should use the opportunity Mirziyoyev presents to nuance their relations with Tashkent.
Uzbekistan is but one of many countries about policy toward which it is impossible to predict the approach of the U. While Mirziyoyev must prove to his Central Asian neighbours that his pre-election efforts were more than calculated platitudes, they should push him for serious dialogue on resources, borders, trade and mutual security.
Russia, China and the West should support their efforts at a high level as progress on those issues would contribute to regional security that is in the common interest. Mirziyoyev won At his final presidential election in March , Karimov received The victor must now consolidate his power while balancing important competing interests.
Crisis group interview, former Kyrgyz official, Bishkek, November Hide Footnote A virtual reception also functions on the foreign ministry website for citizens living abroad. Some hesitate to use these platforms, as they ask for name and address. As the new president consolidates power, he will confront problems that include a struggling economy, high unemployment, threadbare social services, corruption and an agricultural sector in vital need of modernisation.
Citizens face extraordinary movement restrictions due to an antiquated propiska system and need for an exit visa to leave the country. Reform, if attempted will be slow, but the government would do well to address these issues sooner rather than later. The water-intensive cotton sector is the backbone of the economy, but its outdated practices and irrigation system leave the country overly dependent on upstream water from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Outside offers to help modernise the sector could be used not only to improve rural lives and increase incomes, but also to build opportunities for dialogue with Tashkent.
Partners and donors, though, should be realistic about the pace of reform, even if Mirziyoyev gives full support.
A Russian analyst noted:. If [he] tries to change [the system] fundamentally, he will face powerful forces within Uzbekistan. Political groups, clans, whatever you want to call it, have benefited from it, and they have sufficient resources to oppose fundamental changes. President Mirziyoyev appears to be trying to repair relations with neighbours, but they are suspicious. On 11 October, Mirziyoyev spoke of the need to increase trade and cooperation with Afghanistan. Hide Footnote Ahead of his several elections, Karimov also spoke of improving ties, but he never made good on his statements.
Karimov, it is not forgotten, warned that if Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan pressed ahead with proposed HPPs, it could spark a war. The benefits of normalising borders and trade and reaching agreement on sharing natural resources are clear and should be a donor priority. The challenge for all, though, is to build trust in order to begin to address issues that have seemed intractable.
Despite their misgivings, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan should offer top-level consultations and propose a tripartite council to oversee day-to-day management of water and land resources. The bilateral border disputes are a longstanding source of tension and conflict that have created hardships for citizens on both sides of the border and in enclaves.
Tensions and cross-border incidents are common, especially in and around the largest enclaves of Tajik-governed Sarvak and Vorukh, and Uzbek-governed Sokh and Shakhimardan. Hide Footnote In a matter of weeks this autumn, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan carried out joint surveys and provisionally resolved almost all of the un-demarcated areas.
They agree that 56 have now been provisionally resolved. High-ranking Kyrgyz officials remain deeply suspicious and stress the agreements are provisional, and Uzbekistan could yet renege on them. Day-to-day border crossings are now easier, and the numbers crossing at Dostuk, near Osh, have risen from to 1, daily since Uzbekistan agreed to visits for weddings and other family celebrations, not just funerals.
Tensions over the proposed Kambarata-1 dam have dissipated since Russia left the project, and Kyrgyzstan struggles to find an alternative investor. Karimov appeared in the right place at the right time. Uzbekistan was in need of courageous leader indeed, who would save the country from collapse. Many can think that these are high-sounding and empty words, but his assertiveness and courage were manifested in three slips. And the third one was in , when the institution of presidency was established in Uzbekistan, where Islam Karimov became the second President after Mikhail Gorbachev himself.
These steps are worthy of commendation, since they were the messages implying lurch for independence, and should be evaluated as courageous acts because totalitarian Communist Party was alive and still able to suppress opposition. The other bright example of the embodiment of his courage was the Namangan events.
After gaining independence, a group of diversionists, on December 9, , took hostages in the building of executive committee in Namangan, and made an emotional appeal to establish Islamic Republic of Uzbekistan. Having been a candidate for the Presidency, Islam Karimov came to Namangan the next morning. He entered the building alone, and went unguarded and unescorted into the mob, poisoned by the ideas of religious dogmatism.
Taking away the microphone from Tohir Yo? These fragments were recorded [5]. Whatever reform took place in Uzbekistan, it was the initiative of the president.
Karimov became the engine of the whole state policy and was the generator of reforms. This was predominantly on his own, because during the s and the beginning of the s there were few whom he could rely on in conducting state policy: there was a shortage of qualified workers in public management sphere. Logic behind his incremental approach in reaching democratic society was to preserve order. After gaining independence, Karimov realistically perceived that Uzbekistanis are not ready for sheer democracy, because having been in the grip of totalitarian regime of USSR for so long time, they did not know what the democracy is.
To reach it, a step-by-step, not "shock therapy", should be resorted to, planned Karimov; otherwise Fergana and Namangan events could break out once more, which could have spillover effect encompassing the whole Uzbekistan. His words were not as a token gesture to mislead the world community, but gradually Karimov started implementing democratic reforms. At first, a unicameral parliament was established in , then, in , a bicameral parliament — Oliy Majlis Senate and Legislative Chamber — started functioning [8].
Moreover, the role and the place of women in politics and society have increased steadily. The number of women represented in the government and parliament is quite representative. For example, in the Legislative Chamber of Oliy Majlis, 16 per cent are women and in the Senate — 17 per cent [9] , taking into account that Svetlana Artikova is the Deputy Chairman of Senate.
An aversion to the dark past in the political view of Karimov manifested itself in almost every book of him. It was directed to carve badly-shaped-by-others block — to the current and younger generation so as to show them how thorny and dark past the Uzbeks experienced under the yoke of USSR.
Even wearing national costumes were prohibited. Always reminding others of the dark past, the first President cordially strived to reshape the current older generation that still had a persistent communistic mindset and to make the younger generation keep the terrible past the Uzbeks experienced in their minds. Getting acquainted with the Russian people, I hardly heard any good words from them about their Motherland: they spoke mostly on the shortages of Russia and only, notwithstanding the latter is a great power.
This was unpardonable overlook of the Kremlin. That is why, ideological, cultural and identical issues kept in step along with economic and social reforms in the political philosophy of Karimov. Furthermore, there have been TV programs, documentaries, and family films inextricably interlinked with culture and history of Uzbekistan and intra-family relations which have been broadcasted often. Aversion to the Soviet past did not spring from nowhere, but — besides being culturally suppressed by communist ideology prohibiting practicing religion and customs — harsh socio-economic situation in Uzbekistan.
And if you take into account that the minimum subsistence level is evaluated in about 85 rubles, you can judge for yourself how difficult it is for these people to make ends meet today.
Furthermore, Uzbekistan within the Soviet Union, was no more than raw materials' source for the Center. We get 84 percent of the labor input from cultivating cotton and only 16 percent of the income from its primary processing. Other republics receiving our cotton — the inverse proportion: a ready-made shirt, woven and sewn in Russia brings a huge profit. It means that we work hard by the sweat of our brow and others gain profit. Stemming from these factors, revitalization and revival of the economy by promoting diversification and protectionism became part and parcel of his philosophy.
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